The American Freedom Alliance held a conference on Sunday titled “ISIS and its Threat to International Security,” which featured a plethora of Middle East experts, activists, and scholars, who weighed in on the threat posed by the Islamic State.

Egyptian-American human rights activist Nonie Darwish explained that the goal of the Islamic State simply is to commit jihad in the name of expanding its caliphate. Explaining the tactics of the Islamic State, she said that “It started in Egypt” with election of the Muslim Brotherhood. “They saw that they could accomplish the caliphate through elections… but many Egyptians didn’t like where it was heading, towards a caliphate, and they brought down the Muslim Brotherhood.”

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Darwish added, “the caliphate failed to come to the Middle East through elections,” so “they went to Syria and started the caliphate movement with the sword.”

Middle East scholar and Islamist expert Dr. Mordechai Kedar said of IS: “What characterizes this organization in particular is the way in which they implement the earliest Islamic modus operandi… beheadings; mass killings; enslaving of women; crucifying people. These are all methods which were employed by Islam at the very beginning. By the prophet Muhammad… and those who came after him.”

“What this organization is doing is actually going back to the original Islam. To the purest Islam,” Kedar added. “This brings us back to the seventh century when Muhammad was alive.”

Omri Ceren of The Israel Project talked about how “we have to figure out a way to contain threats” such as the Islamic State without helping out the radical Ayatollah Khamenei’s regime in Iran.

Host Avi Davis asked former jihadist Walid Shoebat about the Obama administration’s attitude towards the Islamist threats America faces. “They have a vehement hatred for judeo-christian ethics,” Shoebat argued. “The Muslim Brotherhood and the Islamists take advantage of this kind of thing.”